Program

Young Parenthood Program

The Young Parenthood Program (YPP) is a coparenting counseling program for adolescent expectant parents. This program is designed to help partners develop interpersonal skills and positive coparenting relationships, as well as increase fathers’ engagement in their children’s lives. In an experimental evaluation, YPP was found to have significant impacts on maternal relationship competence, paternal engagement, and fathers’ reports of relationship quality with their children’s mothers.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target Population: Adolescent expectant parents

The Young Parenthood Program (YPP) is a coparenting counseling program designed to enhance young parents’ interpersonal skills, facilitate positive coparenting relationships, and increase parental engagement. Couples participate in 75 minute long, weekly, individual sessions across a ten-week period. Couples receive counseling from experienced clinicians in clinics, community settings, or participant homes. While clinicians follow a prescribed protocol, they are able to customize each intervention to the individual couple. The program includes five phases: understanding the relationships between coparenting and child development, goal-setting, skill development activities, negotiating role transitions, and planning for future coparenting decisions and issues. An intervention manual is available online.

Evaluated population: A total of 105 pregnant adolescents and the biological fathers of their children were recruited to participate in the study. In order to be eligible, mothers were required to be first-time parents, 14-18 years of age, under 26 weeks pregnant, and to have a coparenting father between the ages of 14 and 24 who was willing to participate. Following recruitment a total of 6 couples were ineligible for participation, and 11 couples were lost to attrition, four of whom completed the follow-up, resulting in a final sample of 91 couples (44 control group couples, 44 YPP group couples, and four noncompleters).

The average age for males was 18.5 and 16.5 for females. Most participants in the treatment group were either White/Caucasian (males: 35 percent, females: 50 percent), or Latino/Hispanic (males: 50 percent, females: 45 percent). Similarly, most participants in the control group were White/Caucasian (males: 52 percent, females: 54 percent) or Latino/Hispanic (males: 37 percent, females: 39 percent).

Approach: Couples were randomly assigned to a treatment group who received counseling through YPP or a control group who received standard treatment through schools and prenatal clinics. Couples were interviewed pre-birth during the second trimester (time one), 12 weeks after birth (time two), and 18 months after birth (time three). Relationship competence (the ability to maintain positive coparenting relations and behaviors) was assessed at both time one and time two. Paternal engagement, child abuse potential, nurturing behavior, and relationship with coparenting partner were assessed at time three.

Results: Participation in YPP had significant positive impacts on paternal engagement and fathers’ reports of relationship quality with their partners at time three as well as significant improvements in mothers’ relationship competence scores between time one and time two. Results indicate that participation in YPP does not significantly impact fathers’ relationship competence.